Young people in their early 20s are sometimes called emerging adults. Thanks in part to the economic downturn, they are taking longer to emerge: to get married, for example, and have children of their own. A character in Meg Wolitzer's wonderful new novel “The Interestings” jokes that now “there's a new cutoff age for when adolescence officially ends”: 52.

“The Interestings” traces the development of three men and three women who meet in 1974 as teenagers at a Massachusetts summer camp for the arts. This camp becomes a defining experience for each of them. They find in one another the support they had been missing at home or in high school. What had isolated them before — a love of dance or drawing or a taste for serious literature and theater — now brings them new friends. Finding strength in their group, they call themselves “the Interestings,” creators of a new community more exciting than the stultifying one they left behind.

The short-term problem for the six teenagers is surviving the end of camp and the return to a way of life that will still disappoint them. Longer term, they need to make their own way in the world. Wolitzer skillfully follows the ups-and-downs of these characters, who know that their talents may not be rewarded as they move on. Wolitzer's tone brings to mind a compassionate adult who doesn't scoff at the dreams of these young people or minimize the challenges ahead.

Although I appreciate Wolitzer's desire to expose her characters to a full range of adult experiences, “The Interestings” feels long to me. Some are more interesting than others.

Wolitzer, however, gives them all their due, showing how their shared past continues to influence their lives, even when they reach their early 50s. Along the way, she deftly sketches their changing surroundings, mainly New York, from the 1970s to a few years ago.

A comment by one of the characters, Meg Wolf, gets to the heart of this humane and moving novel. It is 2010 and the Great Recession is under way, a time when parents of college-age students “were terrified that their kids would be unemployable, just another statistic, living at home forever in their childhood bedrooms, among their posters and trophies.” Meg is a feminist theater director who is lucky as well as talented. Her husband, whom she met at the summer camp, has struck it rich in animation. During the “talkback” session after one of Meg's plays, a mother asks her what she should tell her daughter, who wants to be a director even though “there are no jobs.” Meg acknowledges that the road ahead will be “incredibly hard and dispiriting” but if the daughter really wants to be a director and has a talent for it, the mother should say, “That's wonderful.”

“Because the truth is,” Meg says, “the world will probably whittle your daughter down. But a mother never should.”